Advertising vs. Truth pt. 2

Marketing expert Louis Cheskin proclaimed: “For the consumer, the package is the product”.

Wow.

If that doesn’t dazzle you with the virtuosity of its cynicism, read it again.

A Consumer and a Package

Part two of “Avoid Anything That’s Advertised” is: Avoid anything that advertises itself. In other words, anything that comes in a package.

OJ Lied again

Nowhere on this package will you be told that the flavoring is artificial or that the juice was stored in “million gallon containers for up to a year” (See last week’s posts). Or that the nutrients are no more than vitamin tablets added to the questionable liquid.

Avoid the package. Simplify.

The idea that we, as the world’s richest nation, can have fresh orange juice every day for breakfast is seductive. But most of us can’t. What we have instead is an artificial product, with a few lies added to convince us that we’re getting what we want.

What is the alternative? It’s that we can’t always have these luxuries, but what we can have is more luxurious: An occasional, depending on our geography, glass of fresh juice which will thrill with its flavor and which will in fact be the luxury we were seeking.

Packaging rarely benefits the consumer. The gains are for the manufacturer, packager producer, etc. Branding is nearly impossible without elaborate packaging. In fact, food packages were almost unknown until the 20th Century. Just another ‘improvement’ on the perfection of life itself.

Avoid the package. Seemingly random rules like this promote randomness, and that promotes creativity and discovery. They steer us away from chains and franchises to interesting, new things.

It’s time to start thinking out of the box, and stop eating out of it.